


and wonders, and wonders of her love

by onceuponawar



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/F, Rilaya, hartthews, riley/maya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 22:36:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9037697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponawar/pseuds/onceuponawar
Summary: Maya gives Riley a Christmas gift she won't soon forget.





	

**Author's Note:**

> happy holidays everyone! my gift to you all is this themed oneshot; taking place right after the events of gmacm. enjoy!

It’s nearing on midnight, and Riley knows she should be asleep, tomorrow is Christmas after all. Christmas, her favorite holiday. Christmas, with the twinkling lights giving off a warm glow. Christmas, with decorative bulbs of red and green and gold hanging off fresh fir trees. Christmas, with festive music filling the air. Christmas, with soft sweaters you want to burrow into. Christmas, with presents piled under the tree. Christmas, with the smell of cookies always wafting under your nose. Christmas, with snow gently falling, setting the perfect white scene. Christmas, with the joy of giving and receiving. Christmas, without Maya.

It’s nearing on midnight, and Riley knows she should be asleep, tomorrow is Christmas after all, but she still sits in her bay window. The city beyond is brighter than normal, with a decorated tree inside every window and lights wound around every bush and bare tree outside. It’s beautiful and she’s cozy here, in her flannel pajama pants surrounded by pillows and blankets with her small Christmas tree lit beside her, the smell of pie seeping in from under her bedroom door and the taste of a candy cane still on her tongue. She knows she should be happy, overjoyed, actually, as she is every year, but instead there’s this feeling of emptiness.

Riley Matthews, you are the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem.

She doesn’t even giggle at her own Charlie Brown joke, which is when she realizes she’s in a worse funk than she thought.

Every Christmas she’d celebrated since she was seven had been spent with Maya. Every year, sometime in the late afternoon on Christmas Eve, after doing whatever she did with her mother, Maya would come over, help make cookies and decorate the tree. Every year, her entire family, including Maya, would snuggle up on the couch and watch all the Christmas classics; from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to Elf. Every year, Maya would spend the night, curled up in the bay window with Riley, telling funny holiday tales until they both fell asleep. Every year, they’d wake up on Christmas Day, run and rouse everyone else in the house (including Cory, Topanga, Auggie and Ava), then eat cinnamon rolls and tear into their gifts.

But this year, there isn’t that feeling of comfort and love for the holiday. There’s no funny stories or excitement for the morning. There’s no Maya.

This is where Riley realizes that the best part of her Christmas may have never been the decorations or the food or the music or the gifts after all, it may have just been getting to spend the holiday with her best friend. Which only makes her heart ache more. Sure, Auggie had taken note of her sacrifice, giving up Maya to her family for Christmas, but not even Riley herself had realized how big of a forfeiture it really was. She didn’t expect it to hurt this much.

For possibly the first time on any Christmas Eve she’d ever experienced, Riley shed a tear that wasn’t from laughing too hard, but from pure emptiness and longing for her best friend. She wiped it away fiercely, pulling the blanket up to her neck and laying down across the plush cushions of the window.

She reprimanded herself for being such a crybaby, on Christmas Eve of all nights, but the harsh thought did nothing to remove the sadness that made all her bones feel like led. A few more tears slipped from her eyes as the sound of laughter drifted up from the street below, despite her attempts to just squeeze her eyes shut and will them away.

Eventually, she stopped trying to wipe the tears away and instead just allowing them dry on her chin, the feeling of one after the other after the other gracefully slide down her cheeks lull her to sleep.

… 

A resounding knock startles her awake and she twists to see the time: 2:18 A.M. She collapses back into the warmth of her pillow and blanket, nearly falling unconscious again before the realization that someone is knocking on her window in the middle of the night hits her and she bolts upwards; a scream ready to let loose from her mouth if it’s anyone she doesn’t recognize at first glance.

But there sits Maya, the most familiar face that could have appeared. She’s wrapped in a puffy black coat and her hair is in messy waves down her back. No makeup graces her face, which Riley can’t help but smile at. She loved makeup as much as the next girl, but Maya looked even more beautiful without it; especially the way her face is lit by the white Christmas lights that hang on the outside of the bay window.

Riley crawls across the mass of pillows and blankets to open the window, bracing herself as the frigid air blows in. Maya crawls in, stripping off her coat as she does. After grabbing a blanket from the floor and draping it across her lap she shakes out her hair and smiles; everything about it makes Riley’s insides grow warm. There was nothing awkward about Maya’s movements, so much different than earlier when her back was too straight, her shoulders too rigid, her face a mask of confliction. 

Riley is a bit sickened by the pleasure she feels when she thinks that maybe Maya feels more at home here, with her, than she does with her own mother. Maybe she’s too possessive of her friends, maybe that’s why Lucas would run to Texas before participating in a Christmas with her. 

The joy of seeing Maya fading at the hand of her own self-deprecating thought process, she goes to shut the window, the cold air and snowflakes gathering on her fluffy, red and green blanket abruptly discomforting. But her hands barely touch the lip of the pane before Maya’s hand his grasping her wrist tightly. 

“Riley, I need to thank you… and apologize.”

Riley shuts the window, attempting to hide her confusion with a smile as she sits back, facing her best friend.  “Maya, what for?” It’s like her own words knock her out of a trace as questions begin to clog her brain. “Wait, why are you here so late? Christmas with your mom and Shawn is going okay right? Why aren’t you home with them right now? I mean- you know I will always be happy to have you here-”

“Riley.”

“but, Maya, this will be your first real Christmas with them! Why are you-”

“Riley!”

“here?” Riley’s last word dies on her lips, so quiet after Maya’s firm yell that if Maya hadn’t been less than two feet away from her she wouldn’t have even heard it.

“Mom and Shawn are, fine. Great actually, it’s fun actually feeling like a normal family. That’s what I wanted to thank you for, even though I feel like I’m apart of the family just as much when I’m here on Christmas.” Maya’s hands slip into Riley’s as her gaze wanders around her room, taking in the familiar landscape. It’s dark, just dimly lit by the lights strewn everywhere. But she knows she could walk it if it was pitch blank, maybe even in her sleep. This was home.

No, she reminds herself, this girl in front of her, with the dark eyes and warm hands and the aroma of sugar cookies with peppermint lingering around her like a welcomed cloud, she was Maya’s home. No real place could ever compare.

“I’m happy for you Maya, you deserve to enjoy the holidays with your actual family. See,” she says, but not with the enthusiasm she usually holds this time of year. “Christmas wishes do come true.”

Maya's gaze lingers on Riley for a few long moments as she stares out the window, her shoulders relaxed and her dry tear streaks shining in the soft glow of the city beyond. The words are sad, so incredibly sad that they propel Maya forward, allowing her to spit out the words she's been stumbling over since she crawled through the window. 

She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Honey, I want to apologize for Secret Santa.”

“Peaches you don't have to apologize!” Her words are so sincere they hurt; a throbbing pain in Maya’s chest.

“No, I do, because we all treated you terribly the entire time, acting as if it would never work up until it was good for us. We- I- never once thought about how that may make you feel and in the end you didn't receive anything in return, with Ranger Rick running off to Texas…” She trails off, suddenly at a loss for the right words. 

Riley untangles her hand from Maya’s and raises it to gently cup her cheek. “You know that making you all happy is enough of a gift for me.”

Maya bits her lip and shakes her head slightly, wanting to burrow into the warmth the brunette’s hand brings. It was moments like this that she would usually let her eyes flutter closed and the conversation fade into nothing; a comforting silence that doesn’t feel unlike the warm blankets they’re curled under. She didn’t know how to argue when Riley was being so utterly and completely selfless, but this time she doesn’t allow herself to close her eyes. Instead she simply stares at her beautiful and altruistic best friend, her one and only extraordinary relationship, the girl she’d chose to spend Christmas with over any other.

Riley Matthews, the girl she was inevitably and irrevocably in love with.

“Is it okay if I give you a gift anyway?” She whispers, afraid if her voice raises too loud she’ll shatter the trace they’re in. Where nothing seems to matter except the two of them.

Her eyebrows cease slightly, confusion gently gracing her tired features. She peers around the windowseat briefly and when she sees no poorly wrapped package or shimmering ribbon, her eyes meet Maya’s again. “What kind of gift?” She asks.

The world is slowing around them, time barely moving, but Maya’s heart still beats frantically. She doesn’t allow the fear to show in her face, instead smiling. She pulls herself onto Riley’s lap, legs wrapping around her waist as she takes her flushed face in her hands; still lightly nipped by the cold.

“This kind,” She breathes, leaning down to kiss Riley softly on the lips. 

It’s exactly as she’d always imagined, far more even. Warm and tentative and slow, but passionate and more perfect than any dream or wish, the two of them molding together as if they’d done it a thousand times before. Riley’s arms wrap carefully around her waist and tug her even closer.

Eventually they break away, panting lightly, and Maya can’t help but smile. Girlish laughter so unlike Maya erupts from her suddenly, which barely a half second later causes Riley to begin to laugh too. So hard, actually, that she falls backwards into the pile of pillows behind her, Maya in tow; now laying on top, staring down affectionately at Riley.

“Best Christmas gift, by far,” Riley whispers. She reaches up, gently curls Maya’s loose hair behind her ear and goes to kiss her again.


End file.
